By CASEY MCNERTHNEY, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, February 28, 2007

When the Tyee High School teacher told his class that the upcoming parent-teacher conferences were mandatory, one student spoke up.

Connie Redden, then a sophomore in 1977, said the 70-year-old grandmother she lived with couldn't make it. She was busy volunteering for KING/5, and had scheduled a work trip to China.

"He thought I was making it up," said Redden, one of Mary H. Murray's six grandchildren. "It was about then that I realized she wasn't a typical grandmother."

Years later, Murray, then 76, joined the Peace Corps, moving to Antigua to teach villagers English. In January, the great-grandmother of six still walked to her Mountlake Terrace post office and the grocery store, never having lost her mental edge.

Her death on Feb. 21 was officially caused by complications from a broken hip. But family members said Murray decided she would pass away at age 100, just as she decided to use those years in ways few women of her generation did.

At age 18, Murray became the youngest teacher at Ravenna School, teaching third grade and physical training. She fell in love with Jesse Murray, a University of Washington business major, even though the former Mary Hays knew her marriage to Murray -- who died in 1983 -- would end her job. School policy in 1928 didn't allow teachers to be married.

The Spokane girl of adoptive parents later had three children of her own -- two daughters and a son -- and became a primary teacher in Federal Way. The day of her retirement at age 65, the longtime Ballard resident read a newspaper ad from a community organization needing volunteers.

"I called, and the woman on the other end of the phone said, 'We don't want any old people,' " she told Journal Newspapers in 1995. "Well, then I was more determined then ever."

Murray became a King County senior intern in Olympia, coming home to Seattle only on weekends. For years, she volunteered as a probation counselor at the Renton District Court.

For her efforts, Murray was awarded the Governor's Distinguished Volunteer Award in 1983.

"She created her own energy," said daughter Joan Olson of Mustang, Okla. "She did more from 70 to 100 than most people did in a lifetime."

Doctors thought Murray might have been able to recover from her broken hip, though her granddaughter told her it would take 24-hour care and months of rehabilitation at her Mountlake Terrace retirement home.

Murray didn't want to go through that, Redden said. She said she was happy and had done all she could do.

Murray died two weeks later.

"We were there at the end," her granddaughter said. "She said, 'I've accomplished everything I need to in life.'